Well, my output is going to be down for at least a little while. I've switched my 2 GTX460s back over to Folding@home. Their performance on WCG was weak--maybe ~7k PPD per card, compared to just over 100k/card on Folding@home. So I should be down about 14-15k PPD, at least for now. Maybe if I sell one of these HPs I'll throw an ATI card in one of the other ones.

I might be grabbing a 7970 or somesuch for my main machine. After getting a 120hz monitor, I now feel compelled to get some serious graphics power to actually push out that high of a framerate. I suppose the 5870 would then go in the secondary system, replacing the gtx260.

Stay safe gentelman What the festival was for everyone yesterday, if I may ask? Or just a celebration of another weekend?

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Hey guys, I'm good, the wife made sure I was taken care of last night, though she wasn't too happy about it. It was my bro's 5th year anniversary party, and I was making lots of drinks, went through lots of bottles.... Mixed drinks, frozen drinks, on the rocks, the wild turkey, and it catches up to you.

But that was last night, this is Sunday and time to take the family to breakfast

I'm going to take my i7-920/HD7770 rig offline for probably an hour to an hour and a half today--I'm going to finally install it in the Source 210 I bought several weeks back. No need to have a BNIB case just sitting here...

Slightly off-topic.. wondering if anyone else can give me some input on the ATI cards?

The XFX 7950 crunches around 71C with a quiet 49% fan speed at 1000MHz core. I tried playing FarCry3 yesterday with it and the temperatures rocketed up to 80C with a loud 63% fan speed at a lower 900Mhz core.

Bit confused by that: gaming runs hotter than crunching? This also runs almost 20C hotter than the ASUS ones, so wondering if there's a safe limit to these 79xx temps?

Slightly off-topic.. wondering if anyone else can give me some input on the ATI cards?

The XFX 7950 crunches around 71C with a quiet 49% fan speed at 1000MHz core. I tried playing FarCry3 yesterday with it and the temperatures rocketed up to 80C with a loud 63% fan speed at a lower 900Mhz core.

Bit confused by that: gaming runs hotter than crunching? This also runs almost 20C hotter than the ASUS ones, so wondering if there's a safe limit to these 79xx temps?

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I've noticed that WCG just isn't that hard on GPUs. On my nV cards, for example, at the same fan speed the temperatures under Folding@home are something like 20C higher than WCG. Even on my ATI cards, running the 3 WUs at once, temperatures are lower than playing Portal 2 with everything maxed out. My assumption is just that there parts of the GPU that the game uses but the WCG coding folks haven't figured out how to use.

I know that most GPUs have a thermal limit of either 99C of 105C....if you can keep it sub-80C that sounds totally fine. Obviously the lower the better though...

Games are most likely using more parts of the GPU where crunching, in particular for the HCC GPU WUs, might be only doing certain kind of math on the GPU, so even if all the compute cores are being used, the entirety of those cores may not.

I've noticed that WCG just isn't that hard on GPUs. On my nV cards, for example, at the same fan speed the temperatures under Folding@home are something like 20C higher than WCG. Even on my ATI cards, running the 3 WUs at once, temperatures are lower than playing Portal 2 with everything maxed out. My assumption is just that there parts of the GPU that the game uses but the WCG coding folks haven't figured out how to use.

I know that most GPUs have a thermal limit of either 99C of 105C....if you can keep it sub-80C that sounds totally fine. Obviously the lower the better though...

Games are most likely using more parts of the GPU where crunching, in particular for the HCC GPU WUs, might be only doing certain kind of math on the GPU, so even if all the compute cores are being used, the entirety of those cores may not.

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Thanks Guess it makes sense when I see it like that. I just thought it would have been the other way round so that's why I was a little worried.

I have to admit I am starting to miss my 670 for gaming though (sold and used money for 7950).

Slightly off-topic.. wondering if anyone else can give me some input on the ATI cards?

The XFX 7950 crunches around 71C with a quiet 49% fan speed at 1000MHz core. I tried playing FarCry3 yesterday with it and the temperatures rocketed up to 80C with a loud 63% fan speed at a lower 900Mhz core.

Bit confused by that: gaming runs hotter than crunching? This also runs almost 20C hotter than the ASUS ones, so wondering if there's a safe limit to these 79xx temps?

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More off topic - I got a XFX 7770 (2 fan thing) and a ASUS 7770 DirectCu. XFX 1000 MHz, 1000 rpm (40 %) 50 C. Asus 1090 MHz, 1000 rpm 40 C (10 %). Sitting in the same open rig doing same thing. In fact the XFX got the better position in slot 4. Back to topic GPU crunching is not putting a lot of strain on the GPU. Folding/gaiming is a lot harder and why did you stray from Asus ?

More off topic - I got a XFX 7770 (2 fan thing) and a ASUS 7770 DirectCu. XFX 1000 MHz, 1000 rpm (40 %) 50 C. Asus 1090 MHz, 1000 rpm 40 C (10 %). Sitting in the same open rig doing same thing. In fact the XFX got the better position in slot 4. Back to topic GPU crunching is not putting a lot of strain on the GPU. Folding/gaiming is a lot harder and why did you stray from Asus ?

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Nice temps on that. As for the XFX.. well.. the case for the main PC is a mATX with a sound card.. didn't really want a 3-slot card in there. Just never expected the difference to be so HUGE! :shadedshu

Think I'll probably end up looking for some after-market cooling, because too late for a return/swap now. Either that or keep playing with noise-cancelling headphones and pretend nothing is happening whilst I have 20fans pointing at the graphics card.

Nice temps on that. As for the XFX.. well.. the case for the main PC is a mATX with a sound card.. didn't really want a 3-slot card in there. Just never expected the difference to be so HUGE! :shadedshu

Think I'll probably end up looking for some after-market cooling, because too late for a return/swap now. Either that or keep playing with noise-cancelling headphones and pretend nothing is happening whilst I have 20fans pointing at the graphics card.

Slightly off-topic.. wondering if anyone else can give me some input on the ATI cards?

The XFX 7950 crunches around 71C with a quiet 49% fan speed at 1000MHz core. I tried playing FarCry3 yesterday with it and the temperatures rocketed up to 80C with a loud 63% fan speed at a lower 900Mhz core.

Bit confused by that: gaming runs hotter than crunching? This also runs almost 20C hotter than the ASUS ones, so wondering if there's a safe limit to these 79xx temps?

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Get used to it, as my XFX 7950 regularly games at 85-87c (1075/1400 1.05v) and crazy loud fans. When I bought it in June it was $325 (a steal at the time) and it was the only brand with a lifetime warranty so I picked one up. I'll be finding a different AIB manufacturer for my next high end card as this XFX DD crap is basically the bare minimum needed to cool the card. It even has a smaller heatsink than the 7970 version despite the shroud and everything being identical.

Get used to it, as my XFX 7950 regularly games at 85-87c (1075/1400 1.05v) and crazy loud fans. When I bought it in June it was $325 (a steal at the time) and it was the only brand with a lifetime warranty so I picked one up. I'll be finding a different AIB manufacturer for my next high end card as this XFX DD crap is basically the bare minimum needed to cool the card. It even has a smaller heatsink than the 7970 version despite the shroud and everything being identical.

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That both makes me sad and happy. Means mine's not exceptionally bad.. but it definitely is bad. Was also a good deal cheaper than the others and on paper the dual fan looks like a good configuration. The few extra ££ for the Asus were well worth it.

Put the cooler in the rear fan port and add the 4 additional fans (2- front, 2-top) and you will be all set

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Can't. The heatsink on the vREGs is so tall that it blocks the radiator going there (barely, but it still does). I tried to put it in the top--there's just not enough space between the top of the case and the motherboard.

And I already have two fans in the top--two Rosewills. I was thinking of putting the cooler on the bottom, but I don't think that the tubes are long enough (even if I rotate the block) and there isn't much airflow under the bottom of the case. And on the front there isn't space for push/pull

Can't. The heatsink on the vREGs is so tall that it blocks the radiator going there (barely, but it still does). I tried to put it in the top--there's just not enough space between the top of the case and the motherboard.

And I already have two fans in the top--two Rosewills. I was thinking of putting the cooler on the bottom, but I don't think that the tubes are long enough (even if I rotate the block) and there isn't much airflow under the bottom of the case. And on the front there isn't space for push/pull

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Will it mount outside of the case either in the rear or the top?

You won't be able to use the side panel but at least you will have the cooler at an optimal orientation and have the heat leaving the case....

You won't be able to use the side panel but at least you will have the cooler at an optimal orientation and have the heat leaving the case....

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That would almost certainly work. But particularly since this is the system I'm bringing home for winter break, I'd like to have it fully assemble-able. I think that with the 3 120mm fans exhausting it should be fine. It's certainly not ideal like this--I will see what can be done. If it wasn't a sealed loop then I would be able to run the tubes through the top expansion slot--but no way to do that with this setup, unfortunately

That would almost certainly work. But particularly since this is the system I'm bringing home for winter break, I'd like to have it fully assemble-able. I think that with the 3 120mm fans exhausting it should be fine. It's certainly not ideal like this--I will see what can be done. If it wasn't a sealed loop then I would be able to run the tubes through the top expansion slot--but no way to do that with this setup, unfortunately

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Not sure how much space you have, but you could try mounting one fan of the rad inside the 3x optical drive bay, and have the rad in that small gap to the motherboard. Something I learnt recently